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Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

How would Americans be better off with TikTok in Microsoft's hands?

THE MICROSOFT POLICE STATE: MASS SURVEILLANCE, FACIAL RECOGNITION, AND THE AZURE CLOUD https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/microsoft-police-state-m...

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I'm not sure if Americans are better off, but the sale is certainly for political reasons. It's inherently about a fear of the Chinese government data-mining with millions of American citizens; if an American entity is doing it, they probably wouldn't care nearly as much.

The US government’s concern with ByteDance is, and always has been, a question of national security, not privacy.

But for that matter, privacy laws are stronger in the US too.

Privacy is a national security issue. Actively monitoring citizens, privately and publicly, and smearing the data across the US and the rest of the world is going to prove to be a massive national vulnerability in the long run.

Yes, it is well established that the data being collected by social media platforms is ripe for abuse.

The question is: which regulators do the social media companies answer to?

Don’t forget that that national security includes other concerns outside of your personal privacy, for example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/05/18/repor...

> The question is: which regulators do the social media companies answer to?

That's not the question I posed, kube-system. I asked, "How would Americans be better off with TikTok in Microsoft's hands?"

The issue you raise, about which regulators social media companies answer to, dismisses the conflict of interest that occurs when those regulators' align with the police departments that contract Microsoft to surveil citizens. When that happens, are American citizens better off? Clearly not, when they are being targeted by unconstitutional police actions, e.g. actions that violate the first amendment.

ByteDance’s policy for responding to law enforcement requests is the same as Microsoft. Of all the domestic privacy issues you could have brought up, I don’t think local law enforcement is a differentiating concern.

That seems like missing the forest for the trees—we don't have any laws or institutions that apply well here and no legislators willing to write better ones or direct the institutions we have in any sane direction—nobody wants to turn away from this maniacal obsession with growth and be the person who killed the golden goose.

The spectrum of privacy laws (and the underlying laws that make a right to privacy possible) around the world are a lot more broad than “Europe vs not-Europe”. Discussion here often focuses on the differences between the US and EU, but in a broader context, the US legal system is a lot ideologically closer to Western Europe than most of the world.

How wouldn't it? Your link just seems to indicate we shouldn't allow China to have this kind of data.

> Your link just seems to indicate we shouldn't allow China to have this kind of data.

How do you get that from the article? The only mention of China in the article is the photo caption "Microsoft’s MAPP patrol vehicle in Durban sports a facial recognition camera from China-based Hikvision."

Because you can take MS to court for mishandling US citizens data, in the US, in a way that you can't take ByteDance, for the same reason, in China.

Not defending MS. Just stating the obvious with ByteDance.

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